AT THIS SEASON OF THANKSGIVING, TRY THANKING SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE SOME GOOD

A rare tribute -- thanks for a job well-done: We received the following e-mail two weeks ago immediately after SAM BLACKWELL'S review of Southeast Missouri State University's MUSICAL REVIEW performance.

We didn't publish the e-mail because we felt it was a personal note to Sam copied to some of his associates. However, when I recently bumped into MARC STRAUSS, assistant professor of dance and complimented and thanked him for his excellent message ... he asked why we hadn't published it. I explained the above. With his and Sam's (somewhat embarrassed) agreement ... I share these well-written words of praise.

Dear Sam.

I read your review of last night's Musical Theatre Workshop concert this morning (Nov. 12). Lots of arts critics (well, most of them, really) pick one or two things that they like (but more often hate) and proceed to digress in a rambling, bs-sort-of-way about mostly themselves -- why they didn't like it, what was wrong with it, what could have been better if they were directing, etc. They don't talk about the show itself. They make little effort to contextualize the work within the framework of its particular medium or its place relative to the field's tradition(s). They rarely approach the works on their own terms, trying to learn the artists' "language" and "vocabulary" (one of the more enjoyable "secrets" of art worth unraveling). And the review is often negative for negative's sake (part of the problem, not the solution), because it's easier to criticize, not critique.

Certainly, we know as readers that it is really you speaking when you write, especially in your friend-who-really-speaks-from-the-heart "Dear Whomever" column every Thursday. (I've decided it doesn't take guts to write that way, just love.) But you're upfront with your biases, and they are gently woven into the texture of your yarn, not lambasted upside our heads in a tirade. To me, your writing is in the manner of Walter Pater, 19th century British scholar, or Arlene Croce, recent dance critic for The New Yorker, who treated subjectivity as an "imaginative authority normally reserved for poetry and fiction." Writing from your own perspective, with the WORK ITSELF at the fore, becomes an intimate and respectful artistic act. You know how hard the job of "making art" is (especially "good" art, one that can entertain AND ennoble). You tap into the individuals at work, and let us see them in their struggles, not yours.

Somehow, you mention almost everyone, a herculean task that you make look easy, by virtue of your sensitivity to both detail and the larger picture. Your review "'Night on Broadway' is one you'll remember" is typically memorable, simple, direct, and generous. I believe I speak for many of the artists in this area in saying how graced we are to have such a supporter and believer in the potential power of the arts in our lives. Thanks, Sam. Marc Strauss, Assistant Professor of Dance, Southeast Missouri State UniversityIt's THANKSGIVING WEEK. ... Why don't you thank someone. It will probably surprise them ... and I'm sure, will make you feel better.

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The $1,000 reward for the person or persons who shot out the front of LaCroix United Methodist Church represented more of my frustration that someone would commit such a sorry act ... and needs to be identified ... not for punishment, but for help ... before something really harmful is done.

As LaCroix minister RON WATTS commented: "We need to pray for whoever did this ... as the Bible tells us to pray for our enemies. We don't know if this was a random act of violence or what. No one was hurt ... and glass can be replaced."

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Starry-eyed : Some unreported news from the impeachment vindication front: A three-judge federal appeals court recently ruled that Ken Starr had not, contrary to White House propaganda, illegally leaked grand jury secrets. Clinton lawyer David Kendall then filed for a rehearing before the entire D.C. circuit. He lost,11-0.

Meanwhile, FBI director Louis Freeh recently sent Mr. Starr a remarkable thank you letter that predictably has been ignored in the press. FBI men and women "have all been greatly impressed with your sacrifice, persistence, and uncompromising personal and professional integrity," Mr. Freeh wrote on Oct. 19."In all of your many dealings with FBI personnel, divisions, field offices and headquarters elements, we have been continuously impressed with your integrity and professionalism. You have always respected the truth, and have never engaged in any misleading or evasive conduct or practice. Your single objective has been the promotion of justice and the safeguarding of the judicial process."Enough said.

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Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley. But always, if we have faith, God will open a door for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us. A.J. Cronin

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The following congressional action summary is worth sharing for those of you who don't have access to The Wall Street Journal.

No harm, no foul: Congress is about to leave town for the year, amid Beltway and media hazing over all of the legislation it didn't pass. Of course, this is precisely what the rest of the country should be grateful for.

Prosperity is spreading far and wide, teen-agers are getting $9 an hour to sling hamburgers, 25-year-olds are becoming paper millionaires and Congress did almost nothing this year to get in the way. What's wrong with that? Incomes will be able to rise for a few more precious weeks before the politicians return to contmeplate more harm.

In fact, Congress broke the mold in that it actually did a few noteworthy things to sustain the boom. It passed a bill to minimize lawsuits from any Y2K problems.

A bipartisan majority also made it easier for U.S. banks to join the modern world, repealing Glass-Steagall after 66 years. This is a rare act of political self-denial, since previous Congresses had failed to pass this overdue reform to keep sucking campaign PAC contributions from financial lobbyists. Texas Sen. Phil Gramm's replacement of Al D'Amato as Senate Banking Chairman was crucial here.

Then there's the tax cut. In contrast to 1998, this year both houses of Congress passed a bill to return about $1 trillion in taxes to the people who earned it. President Clinton vetoed it, but Congress can't be held accountable for that. We don't recall the Beltway lords denouncing Congress for passing family and medical leave mandates despite President Bush's veto in 1992. This is why we have Presidential elections, and if Congress has the good sense to repeat the exercise next year, tax cuts will be an issue in 2000.

Most of the rest of Congress's achievement is the result of virtuous gridlock. ...Most notably, the Senate didn't give a false sense of security by ratifying Mr. Clinton's badly flawed nuclear test ban treaty. As they say on the hardcourt, no harm, no foul.

Sure, we would like to see Medicare and Social Security modernized to recognize market forces. But that was impossible once Mr. Clinton made his opposition clear early in the year. By blowing up his own bipartisan Breaux-Thomas Medicare Commission, the president made clear his priority was electing his wife and Al Gore rather than reforming entitlements. Note well how Mr. Gore is using a Mediscare campaign against Bradley.

The one large failure of this Congress and it is bipartisan -- has been spending. Both Mr. Clinton and the Ted Stevens-Arlen Specter Republicans have conspired to bust the budget caps they pledged to enforce as recently as 1997. These columns told you then that the politicians were lying, and now they've proved it. Prosperity has deluged Washington with tax revenue that the pols can't keep their mitts off.

Their new mutual pledge to refrain from spending the Social Security surplus is another bipartisan con job. When their final deal is signed, perhaps later this week, the White House and Congress will have used various gimmicks (first proposed by Mr. Clinton in January) to dip into Social Security by $18 billion or so. The rest of the excess FICA tax revenue is being used to retire federal debt, which is better than spending it, but worse than giving it back to the productive private economy.

The big picture here is that Washington is more or less handcuffed until the next Presidential election. Take advantage of the good times while you still can. The Wall Street Journal

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Don't cry for me , Turkey, Japan, Nigeria, Greece, Bosnia, Norway, Canada ... Paper reports Clinton world travels far exceed predecessors: The New York Times featured a well-placed bust chronicling the Clintons' record-breaking and extravagant overseas travels as first couple.

The Times' Marc Lacey reports that Bill Clinton -- who blasted his predecessor George Bush during the 1992 campaign for too much foreign travel -- is set himself to break all presidential travel records.

Clinton's visit last week to Oslo was his 44th overseas, "almost as many sojourns as Bush and Ronald Reagan amassed in their combined three terms," Lacey writes.

At the end of his current trip beginning in Turkey, President Clinton will have visited 63 nations spanning 200 days abroad, way more than any of his antecedents in the White House.

Lacey writes that much criticism has come from such widespread diplomatic globetrotting:"The cost of the trips has riled some of Clinton's detractors on Capitol Hill. In the course of just over three months in 1998, the president's trips to Chile, China and six African countries cost an estimated $72 million, according to a recent study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress."Presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart characteristically laughs off the Times well-chronicled assement: "There are a few places still left on the list he hasn't been. And we have 15 months to rectify that."First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton too has traveled considerably. Of her whopping 51 trips abroad, 23 have been sans president. -- Drudge Report